


Run

by rarelypoetic (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Incest, Kissing, M/M, Pre-Stanford, Wincest - Freeform, brother feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/rarelypoetic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m tired of killing things, and digging up graves, and burning corpses. I’m tired of the dirt, the broken bones, the credit card fraud, the whole fucking package. But most of all, Dad? I’m tired of the shit between us. I’m tired of you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this over a year ago. It's... rough. To say the least.  
>  
> 
> *title taken from a song by Daughter
> 
> EDIT: in retrospect, i'm sorry i wrote this. it was something i just had to get out at the time.

It can’t be said that there is no angst involved in Sam’s deliberating. For months he’d been stumbling through hunts only half-present, picturing himself in a stuffy dorm room surrounded by textbooks rather than in another motel room with theology books and volumes of jacked up lore to keep him company through the night. The whole business of hunting never sat right with Sam. 

Lately, it had been getting worse. 

Sam had been slacking on the job recently, leaving Dad and Dean to pull his weight on top of all the shit they already carried on their own shoulders. Sam knew it wasn’t fair of him, but the bitter, selfish part of him that had always wanted to be plainly, blessedly _normal_ wouldn’t shut up lately. He was causing enough trouble that John pulled him aside after nearly every hunt to give him a ‘stern talking to’. Typically, he waited until they were off the road and out of earshot of Dean, who always hated to hear them fighting and would vocalize his opposition to it loudly. With Dean, the whole arguing process usually went very simply; Sam would tentatively breach the topic of leaving for a little while, going to get a degree, and his brother would give him such a scathing, resolutely disparaging look that Sam often closed his mouth for the night and made a prompt retreat to bed. He couldn’t argue with his brother like he could with his dad-- he didn’t have it in him. 

With John, things could get an ugly kind of explosive, but the conversation was generally not as one-sided as it was with Dean. Sam had the opportunity to fight back, if only because he knew it caught his dad off guard every time. Dean was, and always had been, the epitome of an obedient soldier; the fact that the younger son failed so spectacularly at seeing eye-to-eye with his dad was still a development that grated at John’s nerves like nothing else could. 

On one of the colder nights in late November, the conversation went like this:

“I know you don’t like the idea, bu--” Sam is cut off by the dark look his dad gives him over the rim of his fifty-cent cup of coffee. 

They’re in the middle of Bumfuck, U.S.A, and John Winchester is leaning against the hood of his Impala with caffeine in one hand a shotgun filled with rock-salt shells in the other. They’d just successfully kicked some mediocre poltergeist ass a couple of miles down the interstate, but it had still been a long night of carefully stepping around metaphorical (thank God) landmines. Every one is worn down to their bare bones. Ever since Sam had started poring over pamphlets and college preparatory books, the atmosphere in the motel room dropped ten degrees. His brother started to regard him with flat eyes and tight lips, speaking only to boss Sam around or to order him out of his personal space. 

“It’s not about me not liking the idea,” John says testily, setting down his cup of coffee on the roof. “I didn’t raise you for that kind of life, Sam. I’m sorry.”

 _You’re not sorry_ , Sam thinks, and he knows with utter conviction that it’s true, so he tries his luck for at least the fifth time that night and says it aloud. “The only thing you’re sorry for is that I don’t take my orders with a side of sugar like Dean does. I can’t be your little page boy anymore, Dad.”

“Don’t talk about your brother like that. He’s been a hell of a lot more efficient than you lately,” John spits. His fists are clenched hard at his sides now, his expression cold and closed off, and Sam knows this is it. His last chance.

“It’s not my job to save everyone. I want--” Sam pauses, catching his breath, “I need to get away from this. Start over.”

At this point John is rising to his feet, and Sam can feel the air of irritation John had been possessed of before amplify egregiously. That’s fury he sees now in his Dad’s eyes. “You are not done,” John says gravely, voice dipping low in a way that it hardly ever does around Dean. “Not until you’re burning atop a goddamn pile of wood, Sam. You will not live to see the end of this, because there is. No. End. No finish line. _This_ is your goddamn life.” 

Sam feels something new take root inside of him. Like a blistering coal behind his ribs, blind _hatred_ seethes. It tears through him like scissors through tissue paper, makes him dizzy with the sheer gravity of it. As a lanky, still-growing teenager living in what practically equates to a box with two other grown men, Sam has been carrying a chip on his shoulder for a very long time. But he’s never been livid like this. 

“I am leaving this,” Sam says slowly, measuring his words and feeling the weight of them settle firmly in the air between them. “and for all I care you can rot in motel rooms the rest of your life with Dean. But you think I’ll put up with this bullshit anymore? No. _No._ The difference between you and me is that I want to get out. You can keep chasing evil shit until you take your last breath. Keep running into dead ends and see where that takes you. If you think that you’ll make a difference, if you think you can stop everything that’s really out there, then you’re kidding yourself, Dad. It’ll never be over.” 

_Good fucking riddance_ , Sam doesn’t say. His dad looks like he will go nuclear at any moment, but the second he opens his mouth is precisely when Sam turns away from him. 

“I’m tired of killing things, and digging up graves, and burning corpses. I’m tired of the dirt, the broken bones, the credit card fraud, the whole fucking package. But most of all, Dad? I’m tired of theshit between us. I’m tired of you.” 

“Don’t,” John barks out, and though Sam cannot see his face, he can hear the pain in his dad’s voice like scalding water against his skin. Inside somewhere, he blisters; it's the kind that doesn’t scab over, doesn’t heal. There’s a heavy pause, and then, “Don’t you ever fucking come back.” 

Sam takes two steps towards the motel room and says, “I’ll have my bags packed by morning.” 

_-_

Dean is waiting for him when Sam walks into their room. Through the paper thin walls, they both distantly acknowledge the sound of the Impala’s engine revving outside. The car peels out of the driveway in the next second, and both boys can feel the sudden absence of their father as he takes off down the highway. 

Sam doesn’t know when he’ll be back, doesn’t care at the moment if he’ll be there to see him off in the morning. Goodbyes are messy. There will be frayed ends no matter what they say to each other before he leaves. Presently, the thing that is really bothering Sam is the look on his brother’s face. 

Dean sits on the edge of a dingy comforter looking like he’s been told the end of days is near. The entire line of his back is all tense muscle and rigid vertebrae. His head is tilted towards his lap, but Sam can feel the hollowness in his brother’s eyes because it echoes within himself. 

“Dean, how mu--” 

Sam had meant to ask how much of the conversation he’d heard between him and dad, but Dean interjects with a quiet, “Go to bed, Sammy,” before he can get the words out. Sam stays stubbornly on his feet, watching Dean with an alien look of mild surprise. He’d expected a fight. He’d expected hellfire, punches thrown, shouting themselves hoarse, but not this. Not silence and unrivaled submission. Not acquiescence.

“I--” this time, Sam cuts himself off. Dean lifts the covers on his own bed and turns his face into the pillow without another word. “You know I have to do this,” Sam barrels on, feeling suddenly desperate and like he’s finally lost his grasp on things. 

“No one has a fucking gun to your head, Sam,” Dean finally bites out, lifting his head enough to look properly at this brother. His eye brows are furrowed deeply like he’s angry, but Sam sees the look for what it really is -- his brother doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand why he’d do something like this. 

“It’s not just about...” Sam sighs and crosses the unspoken borderline between his own side of the room and Dean’s. His brother tenses even further at his approach, shoulders drawing up like he’s a new brand of evil. Sam feel something foreign tighten in his chest. “You know I’m not cut out for this, Dean,” Sam says slowly, like he’s calming a spooked horse. “I’ve always been out of place. I’ve _always_ been wrong for this life. You of all people know what this has been doing to me. I have to get out, Dean. I’ll lose it if I don’t.” 

“You’re wrong, Sam!” Dean erupts so instantaneously it’s half-frightening. His hollow eyes catch fire in the dim glow of the bedside lamp. “You’re one of the best fucking hunters I’ve ever known. We’re good together. Me, you, and Dad. We kill things - evil things - all the god damn time. We make a difference. If you leave you’ll be throwing away all of this -- and for what? A frat house and some flaky college chicks?” 

It’s not like Dean to get so involved when he speaks. He is oddly passionate right now, and it’s such a stark contrast from the absolute lack of emotion from a few minutes ago that it leaves Sam on edge. 

“I don’t have anything outside of this life,” Sam says weakly. “I just want to be happy. If that’s as selfish as you’re making it sound, then I’m sorry, but I’m greedy.” 

Dean’s eyes harden. “Dad built us to be hunters. It’s what we were meant to do.” 

“But are you happy?” Sam asks the million dollar question and watches closely to see if Dean’s resolve will falter. It doesn’t. 

“Yes,” Dean eventually says, eyes softening a bit at the corners. Dean looks at his brother, really studies his face for a few minutes, and suddenly understands what he won’t say out loud. 

Dean is happy because of Sam. Because he’s here, in his life, fighting alongside him. Dean doesn’t feel like he can do this without his brother. The responsibility that comes with that knowledge is not something that Sam feels ready to shoulder. He loves his brother, but -- he can’t. He can’t condemn himself to a life of wandering the roads, even if it’s with the knowledge that Dean will always have his back. Even if... he will never stop being the most important thing in Sam’s life. And he won’t. Not ever. 

“You know I can’t stay.” Sam reaches a hand for Dean’s shoulder, tries to make him understand, but the look on his brother’s face is actually physically painful to look at. “Don’t make me. Don’t ask me to, please. Please,” Sam begs. 

Dean reaches for him all at once, both hands coming out to snatch at the hem of Sam’s shirt collar. He tugs him in close, right up against his chest, so that they’re exactly eye to eye. Sam can see everything: the silent _I need you_ that plays like a broken record in the dead space between them, the infallible devotion that his brother harbors like a crippling thorn in his side, and the grim determination to keep him right where he is and not ever let him out of his sight. 

“You deserve to be happy,” Dean says against the slope of his cheekbone, pushing his face closer. This is a side of him Sam is sure that no one anywhere, between any stretch of highway or in any rotting motel room, has ever seen. They share the same breaths for a few moments, trading recycled air for enough time that their inhales and exhales fall into tandem with each other. “But I can’t do this without you.” Dean speaks the words into Sam’s skin, hoping to brand them there so they don’t float around the room being as large and as clumsy as they feel coming out of his mouth. 

It’s too easy, almost disturbingly so, for Sam to turn his neck a little to the left, to tilt his head just so, and to catch Dean’s bottom lip with his teeth and draw it into the warmth of his mouth. He does it partially to stop the agreement he can feel boiling in his veins - a few more seconds looking at his brother’s intoxicated eyes and he would’ve agreed to stay no matter how deeply wrong he felt about it - he also does it because there’s this strong, inexplicable draw between them, almost like a physical pull. Sam comforts himself on the fact that this feels inevitable, like all paths would lead to here anyway, so how could he not indulge? 

His mouth works frantically against Dean’s to achieve pliancy. He needs this right now. He knows, with the erratic metronome of his brother’s heart against his chest, that Dean feels the same thing. The need, the draw. 

Sam brings a large palm up to the nape of his brother’s neck, threading his fingers through the fine hairs their and using them to get that much closer. Their mouths are slick now where they slide together, but their lips still fit in a neat way that is not at all unmistakable. It feels like everything they’ve lived through was only to build up to this moment. 

It is deliverance and grounding all at once. Sam knows he is tethered, but with Dean’s warmth, with his tongue moving against his own, his nose bumping against his cheek, he can hardly bring himself to care, even when the movement of their lips promises the same relentless sentiment: _stay_. 

They kiss until they are gasping against each other, writhing with the need to breathe and the equally pressing need to be closer still. Sam is finally the one who pulls his head to the side and drinks in the first deep breath he’s had in a while. Dean’s chest rises and falls rapidly beneath where Sam’s arm is resting, and they both suddenly realize the position they’d gotten themselves into without giving it any thought. Sam is draped over most of Dean, covering him from the shoulders down. His legs are on either side of his brother, but he’s not so much straddling his body as he is blanketing it. 

“I’m sorry,” Dean says out of nowhere, turning his face so that it is pressed firm and safe against Sam’s shoulder. He does not ask what Dean means, because they both know he isn’t done speaking. “I’m sorry for asking too much,” Dean continues. His breathing has evened out by now, but they are still pressed together and warm in all of the same places. The same feelings are still there, just subdued now. Definitely not dormant and repressed as they had been for years. 

“I don’t think you can help it,” says Sam quietly. Dean shifts against him and his little brother presses his lips against the pulse point in his neck. Dean goes limp. “I’ll leave, but we’ll go together,” Sam promises. “No more of this, okay? We’ll do things ourselves, our own way.” 

Dean is not a man of faith, but for this, for what his brother is asking of him, he believes in it more than anything he’s ever killed or hunted. 

_“Okay.”_


End file.
